Monday, March 20, 2006

Dell plans to increase staff in India

Dell, the world's top PC maker, plans to double its headcount in India over three years, its founder said on Monday, but there was no word on the location of a planned manufacturing unit in the country.Dell said its staff numbers in India would rise to 20,000 over the next three years from about 10,000 now. Dell has set up huge business process outsourcing units to tap India's vast pool of low-cost English-speaking workers, as other multinationals such as General Electric have done.

"India produces over 200,000 engineers and we see that as an asset for our hardware and software activities," Chairman Michael Dell told reporters in India's technology capital, Bangalore.

Research firm IDC expects the Indian computer market to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 23 percent until 2010.

SemIndia, a consortium of overseas Indians, recently announced plans to set up its semiconductor chip-fabrication unit in Hyderabad, with technology from America's Advanced Micro Devices. The first phase of the project is to be implemented in three years' time with a $1 billion investment.

Paul-Henri Ferrand, Dell's vice president and general manager for South Asia, said the U.S. company's new Indian plant may even export to Eastern Europe depending on its capability.

"It might be more cost-effective to export it from India than from Ireland or from China," he said.